Getting the unemployed back into work, upskilling small business owners and finding a pathway for young people to find work form the heart of National’s Reskilling and Retraining Policy which National Leader Judith Collins announced in Nelson today.

“This is a fresh approach on how we can inspire people to further themselves at a time when it is needed most,” National Party Leader Judith says.

“Central to this is SkillStart, a rapid retraining and job placement scheme, which will get displaced Kiwis into jobs quickly and provide a strong incentive for polytechnics, universities and private training providers to deliver short training courses that are fully aligned with the skills Kiwi businesses need.

“Reskilling and Retraining includes a raft of packages which will target many sectors and will see more New Zealander’s get back into the driver’s seat.”

The package includes:

· SkillStart: Designed to rapidly retrain Kiwis who have lost their jobs to get them back into the workforce. Under the scheme, tertiary training providers will be eligible for $4000 payment for every unemployed person they retrain and get back into full-time work within a year.

· Small Business Builder – A 12 week business training and mentoring programme to provide unemployed Kiwis with the essential skills they need to start a business.

· Small Business Accelerator – A dedicated fund to deliver management training to small business owners, to help them grow their businesses and generate jobs.

· Under 25 Job Coach – A specialist position within WINZ offices tasked with working with Kiwis under 25 on the JobSeeker benefit to develop personalised, intensive ‘path to work’ plans to get them back into the workforce.

· Skills and Jobs Hubs – Expansion of National’s successful Skills and Jobs Hub model using purpose-built centres to deliver wraparound services and match unemployed Kiwis with jobs generated from our long-term infrastructure upgrade.

· Work-focussed welfare – Ensuring our social welfare system is geared towards supporting and encouraging people to move from welfare back into work.

· Vocational Education – Reversing the Government’s expensive and distracting restructuring of the vocational education sector to ensure our tertiary system is focussed on frontline education and delivering skills.

· NZ Tech 2030 – Boosting the supply of tech-related skills through scholarships and dedicated ICT graduate schools, to help achieve our ambitious plan to double the size of our technology sector by the end of the decade, creating thousands of high paying, future-proofed jobs.

“National knows that training providers, properly incentivised and working with the employers in their regions, are in a much better position to identify where the new jobs are going to come from and what skills are necessary to fill them,” Judith Collins says.

“This package is about getting New Zealanders back to work and developing a stronger economy and this plan will be the difference for New Zealanders, providing them with choices.”

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